scholarly journals The structural sensitivity of elicited imitation as a measure of implicit grammatical knowledge

2020 ◽  
pp. 265-284
Author(s):  
Hedayat SARANDİ
2009 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 345-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
PATRICIA A. DUFF ◽  
YASUYO TOMITA ◽  
WATARU SUZUKI ◽  
LORENA JESSOP

2006 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 879-898 ◽  
Author(s):  
BEN AMBRIDGE ◽  
JULIAN M. PINE

The present study used an elicited imitation paradigm to test the prediction of Schutze & Wexler's (1996) AGREEMENT/TENSE OMISSION MODEL (ATOM) that the rate of non-nominative subjects with agreement-marked verb forms will be sufficiently low that such errors can reasonably be disregarded as noise in the data. A screening procedure identified five children who produced non-nominative subject errors (all her for she) who were then asked to repeat 24 sentences with 3sg feminine pronoun subjects (she) and agreeing main verbs or auxiliaries. All five children produced at least one non-nominative subject (her) with an agreement-marked verb form, and for none of these five children was the non-NOM+AGR rate significantly different to the rate that would be expected by chance, given the independent frequencies of non-nominative subjects and agreement-marked verb forms in their data. The three children for whom this expected (by chance) error rate was significantly greater than 10% (representing an acceptable level of noise in the data) produced non-NOM+AGR errors at a rate significantly greater than 10%, counter to the prediction of the ATOM. These results replicate and extend the naturalistic-data findings of Pine et al. using a different method. They also provide support for the use of elicited imitation as a methodology for assessing children's early grammatical knowledge.


2011 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 821-858 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOSJE VERHAGEN

ABSTRACTThis study investigates the acquisition of verb placement by Moroccan and Turkish second language (L2) learners of Dutch. Elicited production data corroborate earlier findings from L2 German that learners who do not produce auxiliaries do not raise lexical verbs over negation, whereas learners who produce auxiliaries do. Data from elicited imitation and sentence matching support this pattern and show that learners can have grammatical knowledge of auxiliary placement before they can produce auxiliaries. With lexical verbs, they do not show such knowledge. These results present further evidence for the different behavior of auxiliary and lexical verbs in early stages of L2 acquisition.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-183
Author(s):  
Valentina Cristante

Abstract In the present article I investigated whether data obtained from 7-year-old German L1 and German-Turkish eL2 children by means of an elicited imitation task including grammatical and ungrammatical sentences mirrored current findings in acquisition research concerning case marking, adjective inflection, V2 position and finiteness. The results show that L1 children have full mastery of all four phenomena, as they revealed a greater tendency to correct ungrammatical sentences than to introduce errors into grammatical sentences. On the other hand, eL2 children differed from L1 children in terms of how they dealt with the noun-related phenomena, as they did not reveal a clear preference for either changing grammatical items or correcting ungrammatical items. In the discussion, I propose how to minimise the likelihood that participants simply repeat ungrammatical items verbatim in further imitation studies and be thus able to collect more reliable data on their grammatical knowledge. The article ends with a proposal for a primary school exercise on case marking that involves correcting errors on case marking. The suggestion is that ungrammatical sentences can be used in grammar teaching to assess pupils’ linguistic knowledge and also to guide their attention to specific regularities of the language, thus stimulating language reflection.


1982 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-41
Author(s):  
Larry J. Mattes

Elicited imitation tasks are frequently used as a diagnostic tool in evaluating children with communication handicaps. This article presents a scoring procedure that can be used to obtain an in-depth descriptive analysis of responses produced on elicited imitation tasks. The Elicited Language Analysis Procedure makes it possible to systematically evaluate responses in terms of both their syntactic and semantic relationships to the stimulus sentences presented by the examiner. Response quality measures are also included in the analysis procedure.


2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (7) ◽  
pp. 2319-2324
Author(s):  
Rina Muka ◽  
Irida Hoti

The language acquired from the childhood is the language spoken in the family and in the place of living. This language is different from one pupil to another, because of their social, economical conditions. By starting the school the pupil faces first the ABC book and then in the second grade Albanian language learning through the Albanian language textbook. By learning Albanian language step by step focused on Reading, Writing, Speaking and Grammar the pupil is able to start learning the second language on the next years of schooling. So, the second language learning in Albanian schools is related to the first language learning (mother tongue), since the early years in primary school. In our schools, the second language (English, Italian) starts in the third grade of the elementary class. On the third grade isn’t taught grammar but the pupil is directed toward the correct usage of the language. The textbooks are structured in developing the pupil’s critical thinking. The textbooks are fully illustrated and with attractive and educative lessons adequate to the age of the pupils. This comparative study will reflect some important aspects of language learning in Albanian schools (focused on Albanian language - first language and English language - second language), grade 3-6. Our point of view in this paper will show not only the diversity of the themes, the lines and the sub-lines but also the level of language knowledge acquired at each level of education. First, the study will focus on some important issues in comparing Albanian and English language texts as well as those which make them different: chronology and topics retaken from one level of education to another, so by conception of linear and chronological order will be shown comparatively two learned languages (mother tongue and second language). By knowing and learning well mother tongue will be easier for the pupil the foreign language learning. The foreign language (as a learning curriculum) aims to provide students with the skills of using foreign language written and spoken to enable the literature to recognize the achievements of advanced world science and technology that are in the interest of developing our technique. Secondly, the study will be based on the extent of grammatical knowledge, their integration with 'Listening, Reading, Speaking and Writing' as well as the inclusion of language games and their role in language learning. The first and second language learning in Albanian schools (grade III-VI) is based on similar principles for the linearity and chronology of grammatical knowledge integrated with listening, reading, writing and speaking. The different structure of both books help the pupils integrate and use correctly both languages. In the end of the sixth grade, the pupils have good knowledge of mother tongue and the second language and are able to write and speak well both languages.


Author(s):  
Daniel R. Isbell ◽  
Young-A Son

Abstract Elicited Imitation Tests (EITs) are commonly used in second language acquisition (SLA)/bilingualism research contexts to assess the general oral proficiency of study participants. While previous studies have provided valuable EIT construct-related validity evidence, some key gaps remain. This study uses an integrative data analysis to further probe the validity of the Korean EIT score interpretations by examining the performances of 318 Korean learners (198 second language, 79 foreign language, and 41 heritage) on the Korean EIT scored by five different raters. Expanding on previous EIT validation efforts, this study (a) examined both inter-rater reliability and differences in rater severity, (b) explored measurement bias across subpopulations of language learners, (c) identified relevant linguistic features which relate to item difficulty, and (d) provided a norm-referenced interpretation for Korean EIT scores. Overall, findings suggest that the Korean EIT can be used in diverse SLA/bilingualism research contexts, as it measures ability similarly across subgroups and raters.


Author(s):  
Shu-Ling Wu ◽  
Yee Pin Tio ◽  
Lourdes Ortega

Abstract Elicited imitation (EI), a short-cut measure of global proficiency in second language (L2) research, requires participants to listen to sentences and repeat them as closely as possible. To support instrument sharing and assessment of L2 proficiency for longitudinal and crosslinguistic research, we created a parallel form of an EI task (EIT) for L2 English originally developed by the third author and colleagues and investigated the reliability and validity of the original and new forms. Eighty-two participants completed the two EITs, an oral narrative task, and a self-diagnostic survey. Both forms exhibited high reliability and good alignment with external criterion measures. Both distinguished well among four proficiency levels in the sample. Further, participants’ perception of EI difficulty aligned well with their EI scores. We suggest some improvements to boost forms equivalence and discuss new insights about the nature of EI as reconstructive, integrative, modality independent, and with indirect links to communicative abilities. Our study seeks to make this English EIT instrument widely useful to the L2 research community.


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